Victoria Beckham at the MTV Movie Awards Photos: Getty Images for MTV
It’s going to be hard to escape David Beckham this summer, especially when the lavishly coifed soccer god arrives in Los Angeles to play for the Galaxy. But for us, the main event isn’t Becks: It’s his wife, Posh (a.k.a. Victoria). When NBC announced it had slashed the promised summer reality series about the pair’s move from six full episodes to a one-hour blip of a special, and we heard that no one showed up to her DVB clothing launch at Saks last week, it almost crushed our spirit. Because we love Posh — every last overtanned, surly inch of her — and we have to wonder: Does no one understand her like we do?
Certainly, we get why Americans might think Posh is a sour-faced, trashy, underfed harpy. We’ve seen the unsmiling, brittle-faced photographs. We’ve watched as she blew pots of money at last summer’s World Cup on fresh hair extensions and inspired all the other WAGs — “wives and girlfriends” of the soccer players — to try and match her daffy, skimpy fashions. We agree that it’s possible she lacks the strength to chew solid food. And we’re pretty sure her influence led Karl Lagerfeld to sew spangled hot pants onto a corset.
But consider the flip side: How awesome must a woman be in order to inspire the Kaiser to delve into high-fashion spankies? Forget David and his Golden Balls; he’s just the side dish. Posh has made herself the main course. She’s a classic diva, as inspired by the best nighttime soaps. Why simply attend a Proenza Schouler show when you can sweep in dramatically just seconds before the lights dim? Why name your child Robert when you can go with Romeo? Why be demure on the red carpet — or anywhere? — when you can affect Naomi-levels of fierceness? And why quietly change your hairstyle when you can instead loudly claim that wild sex with your hot — and reportedly adulterous — husband caused your extensions to rip loose? When Hollywood’s cadre of overexposed starlets head out for coffee, it’s in jeans and Uggs; when Posh deigns to go off-the-rack, it’s in something like the plastic-looking zebra-print outfit she picked up for the MTV Movie Awards and wore with a neon-pink bra, like a refugee from an eighties-hair-band video.
No one on the A-list can pull off this level of so-bad-it’s-brilliant the way Lady Becks can. And though it’s the ultimate riff on her “Posh” persona, people think she has no sense of humor. Clearly, they’ve never read That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between, the beauty and fashion guide in which she thanks Joan Collins for “being [her] real mother.” How apt that Posh should revere an international icon of bitchy extravagance. But then, that’s how Posh planned it, because Posh gets the joke.
In this age of starlets frequenting rehab before they’re even old enough to drink legally, we find Posh’s patented brand of over-the-top drama rather soothing and escapist. She’s like Celebrity Sorbet, the palate cleanser we’re served between heavy courses of sweaty idiots feuding with their mothers and spilling out of Escalades sans panties. She’s totally delicious and refreshing. If only the rest of America would take a bite. —The Fug Girls
Earlier: Americans Persistently Uninterested in Victoria Beckham [NYM]
